THEY SAY that you should start by carrying a bag of flour if you want even the merest hint of the 24/7 lifelong responsibility that is the decision to raise a child, writes QUENTIN FOTTRELL.
In one vintage episode of Frasier entitled "Flour Child", Niles, the pernickety brother in the Crane family tree, tried this experiment, but eventually crumpled under the pressure. "I can see how parents can be obsessed with worry," he fretted.
"Last night, I actually had a dream my flour sack was abducted and the kidnapper started sending me muffins in the mail."
With that in mind, I thought it best to start with a pet. "You buy a dog?" some friends said. "That would be so cruel." Thanks very much, I replied. "But who would look after the dog while you're at work?" they said. "Who would feed it? Who would take it for walks?"
Having a dog scraping at the door, yapping with unbridled joy at my return, turns out to be an intrinsically selfish act. And it would be too, if it was all about how this new addition to my household would improve my humour and my life.
And, so, I downgraded to two cuddly toys I found in a chi-chi lifestyle store in San Francisco, as you do. Their personalised tags won me over. One is a dog with stumpy legs ("Dara: Loves to play soccer but usually loses the ball right away!"), the other a cat ("Addy: Went outside yesterday and accidentally ate a lemon - she loved it!").
I see how it looks. This is not exactly a story brimming with great personal success, but it is a timely reminder that to care for another is not so much a right as it is a responsibility.
Beyond that, it is possible to sponsor a child in the developing world. The charity gives you a photograph, sends you Christmas cards to post to the child, but doesn't recommend you write long letters as they need to be translated and, if able, the child will even write you a regular letter - with a copy of their school report. Call it the Cabbage Patch Kid School of Charity, which bestows a sense of ownership and all-important make-a-difference fuzzy feeling in the pit of your tummy. But as a marketing exercise, it works.
Of course, nobody has a right to adopt, just a right to apply for adoption. And nobody has an innate right to be a parent, especially if they are unfit for it. You only need to look at those parents pushing prams whacked out and drugged up on the streets of Dublin. In the US and UK, where gay couples can adopt, they are commonly the ones who take older children and/or those with behavioural/developmental problems. (Supergays to the rescue!) Straight couples ahead in the queue are frequently searching for the perfect baby.
Here's a strange conundrum: single people here can adopt, while committed gay couples cannot. You have to be married to be a "couple", but even the Civil Partnership Bill looks unlikely to change that. If a gay couple raises a child, the non-biological parent is not recognised in law. Margaret Gill has spoken out on RTÉ about this after her daughter Barbara died after being knocked off her bicycle. Barbara's partner Ruth must pay a heavy gift tax if she and their son Stephen are to receive any of Barbara's estate.
Pushing the bounds of diversity, a married American transgendered man Thomas Beatie is legally, if not biologically, male and . . . pregnant. He recently told Oprah: "It's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human desire." It would also help if it is a desire primarily about the child and not about fulfilling our own ambition of genetic immortality.
Beatie wrote in The Advocate: "Our situation ultimately will ask everyone to embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal."
In Ireland, "normal" adoption is contradictory and haphazard but there are other ways. There are some 4,500 children in foster care. Straight and gay people here can foster, and share their emotional and financial resources with many children in one lifetime. As an alternative, fostering is a selfless act without entitlement, one area in life where we appear happy to rent, not buy, and shows that raising a child can be the ultimate act of self-sacrifice rather than - depending on the motive - the ultimate act of self-validation.
Aside from Dara and Addy, I remain "childless". I have many children in my life. And they all enrich it.
I know single women of a certain age who say: "You don't want children like I do." That's not strictly true. Had I grown up with the luxury of that expectation, of gay civil marriage and adoption, I might have shown more confidence or ingenuity to start a family.
But as the world turns and our antiquated family laws slowly evolve, that too may change.